Distinguished Engineer - Data Platform

At Early Warning, we’ve powered and protected the U.S. financial system for over thirty years with cutting-edge solutions like Zelle®, Paze℠, and so much more. As a trusted name in payments, we partner with thousands of institutions to increase access to financial services and protect transactions for hundreds of millions of consumers and small businesses.

Positions located in Scottsdale, San Francisco, Chicago, or New York follow a hybrid work model to allow for a more collaborative working environment.

Candidates responding to this posting must independently possess the eligibility to work in the United States, for any employer, at the date of hire. This position is ineligible for employment Visa sponsorship.

Overall Purpose

The Distinguished Engineer is a senior-most individual contributor responsible for solving the company’s most complex, enterprise-wide engineering challenges. This role provides strategic technical leadership while remaining deeply hands-on in architecture, design, and coding. This position defines and drives large-scale, cross-functional initiatives that span multiple domains, ensuring systems are secure, scalable, resilient, and aligned to long-term business strategy. The Distinguished Engineer operates with executive presence and strong business judgment and is accountable for delivering enterprise-level technical outcomes in partnership with senior Technology leadership, including the CTO.

Essential Functions

• Serves as a recognized technical authority across the organization, leading the design and evolution of large-scale, distributed, cloud-native systems.
• Drives architectural strategy, engineering standards, and key technology decisions impacting multiple platforms and teams.
• Maintains hands-on involvement in architecture, system design, and coding, including development of proof-of-concepts and resolution of complex production issues.
• Leads complex, multi-year enterprise initiatives from concept through delivery, ensuring alignment to strategic objectives and technical excellence.
• Collaborates closely with Engineering, Architecture, Security, Infrastructure, Data, and Operations leaders to deliver cross-functional outcomes.
• Ensures solutions are built in accordance with engineering best practices, including quality standards, CI/CD, automated testing, scalability, observability, and secure development principles.
• Promotes incremental, production-ready delivery and avoids large-scale “big bang” implementations.
• Provides executive-level communication regarding progress, risks, architectural trade-offs, and long-term technology implications.
• Mentors and elevates senior engineers and technical leaders, raising the overall engineering bar across the organization.
• Ensures compliance with security policies, regulatory requirements, audit standards, and service level commitments.
• Supports the company’s commitment to risk management and protecting the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of systems and data.

Minimum Qualifications  

• Education or experience typically obtained through completion of a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or equivalent professional experience.
• Highly experienced, often with 20 or more years of progressive software engineering experience, including technical leadership of large-scale enterprise initiatives.
• Minimum 5 or more years of experience designing and operating highly scalable, distributed systems in cloud environments.
• Minimum 5 or more years of experience implementing cloud-native solutions using containerization, CI/CD, automated testing, and secure development practices.
• Demonstrated ability to provide technical leadership through large-scale system designs, upgrades, and enterprise releases.
• Deep expertise in at least one major technical domain such as distributed systems, full-stack platforms, data-intensive architectures, or cloud infrastructure.
• Demonstrated ability to influence senior leadership and work effectively in cross-functional teams to generate results.
• Excellent interpersonal, oral, and written communication skills with strong executive presence and business acumen.
• Background and drug screen.

• Master’s degree or Doctorate preferred.
• Recognized industry thought leadership through published works, patents, speaking engagements, or open-source contributions.
• Experience migrating complex enterprise systems from on-premises to cloud environments.
• Experience leading architectural modernization or large-scale digital transformation initiatives.

The base pay scale for this position in:
Phoenix, AZ/ Chicago, IL in USD per year is: $206,000 - $275,000.
San Francisco, CA in USD per year is: $248,000 - $330,000.
Additionally, candidates are eligible for a discretionary incentive plan and benefits.
This pay scale is subject to change and is not necessarily reflective of actual compensation that may be earned, nor a promise of any specific pay for any specific candidate, which is always dependent on legitimate factors considered at the time of job offer. Early Warning Services takes into consideration a variety of factors when determining a competitive salary offer, including, but not limited to, the job scope, market rates and geographic location of a position, candidate’s education, experience, training, and specialized skills or certification(s) in relation to the job requirements and compared with internal equity (peers). The business actively supports and reviews wage equity to ensure that pay decisions are not based on gender, race, national origin, or any other protected classes.

Some of the Ways We Prioritize Your Health and Happiness 

• Healthcare Coverage – Competitive medical (PPO/HDHP), dental, and vision plans as well as company contributions to your Health Savings Account (HSA) or pre-tax savings through flexible spending accounts (FSA) for commuting, health & dependent care expenses.

• 401(k) Retirement Plan – Featuring a 100% Company Safe Harbor Match on your first 6% deferral immediately upon eligibility.

• Paid Time Off – Flexible Time Off for Exempt (salaried) employees, as well as generous PTO for Non-Exempt (hourly) employees, plus 11 paid company holidays and a paid volunteer day.

• 12 weeks of Paid Parental Leave

• Maven Family Planning – provides support through your Parenting journey including egg freezing, fertility, adoption, surrogacy, pregnancy, postpartum, early pediatrics, and returning to work.

And SO much more! We continue to enhance our program, so be sure to check our Benefits page here for the latest. Our team can share more during the interview process!

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Early Warning Services, LLC (“Early Warning”) considers for employment, hires, retains and promotes qualified candidates on the basis of ability, potential, and valid qualifications without regard to race, religious creed, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, protected veteran or disability status or any factor prohibited by law, and as such affirms in policy and practice to support and promote equal employment opportunity and affirmative action, in accordance with all applicable federal, state, and municipal laws. The company also prohibits discrimination on other bases such as medical condition, marital status or any other factor that is irrelevant to the performance of our employees.